onted me
as a beehive of business offices. I couldn't quite get used to the new
names and the new faces and the new shops and the side-street theaters
and the thought of really nice girls going to a prize-fight in
Madison Square Garden, and the eternal and never-ending talk about
drinks, about where and how to get them, and how to mix them, and how
much Angostura to put into 'em, and the musty ale that used to be had
at Losekam's in Washington, and the _Beaux Arts_ cocktails that used
to come with a dash of absinthe, and the shipment of pinch-neck Scotch
which somebody smuggled in on his cruiser-yacht from the east end of
Cuba, and so-forth and so-forth until I began to feel that the only
important thing in the world was the possession and dispensation of
alcohol. And out of it I got the headache without getting the fun. I
had the same dull sense of being cheated which came to me in my
flapper days when I fell asleep with a mouthful of contraband gum and
woke up in the morning with my jaw-muscles tired--I'd been facing all
the exertion without getting any of the satisfaction.

The one bright spot to me, in that lost city of my childhood, was the
part of Madison Avenue which used to be known as Murray Hill, the
right-of-way along the west sidewalk of which I once commandeered for
an afternoon's coasting. I could see again, as I glanced down the
familiar slope, the puffy figure of old Major Elmes, who in those
days was always pawing somebody, since he seemed to believe with
Novalis that he touched heaven when he placed his hand on a human
body. I could see myself sky-hooting down that icy slope on my
coaster, approaching the old Major from the rear and peremptorily
piping out: "One side, please!" For I was young then, and I expected
all life to make way for me. But the old Major betrayed no intention
of altering his solemnly determined course at any such juvenile
suggestion, with the result that he sat down on me bodily, and for the
next two blocks approached his club in Madison Square in a manner and
at a speed which he had in no wise anticipated. But, _Eheu_, how long
ago it all seemed!

_Saturday the Tenth_

Peter has written back in answer to my question as to the expediency
of sending my boy off to a boarding-school. He put all he had to say
in two lines. They were:

"_I had a mother like Dinkie's, I'd stick to her until the stars were
dust._"

That was very nice of Peter, of course, but I don't imagin